NEEDHAM, Mass. — Editor's note: The video above was published earlier this month for a separate Baylor story.
The summer of 2021 was to be a summer full of education, learning, asking questions and doing for Corinna Kent, a sophomore Pre-Med student at Baylor University.
Kent was back in her hometown of Needham, Massachusetts working toward her EMT certification when she volunteered to get in an extra ride in an ambulance on Friday, July 9. Those hours would go toward the required 16 hours needed for her class at MassBay Community College.
"I asked my professor if it was okay I got in some extra ride time with just a medic truck, which receive the 911 calls, but I didn't expect it to be anything crazy," Kent said. "I knew it was going to be more exposure but I didn't expect anything crazy like a baby."
Kent said when they got the call of a woman in labor, everything about the call was all routine. She said when they arrived at the woman's apartment complex, there was a discussion as to whether or not the baby should be delivered there and if they could make it to the hospital.
What happened next, on the road, is something Kent keeps playing in her mind over and over.
"We ended up getting her loaded up and about a mile to a mile and half away," she started to explain before shifting to describe the scene. "So when you open the doors of the ambulance and look inside from the back, the two paramedics, one was at the head of the ambulance and one was sitting next to me on the bench and I was sitting closest to the door, which is why I was the first one to see the head of the baby."
Kent said she's gone through many classes as a pre-med student and knows from instruction that once you see the head, birth is imminent.
She said she assisted as the paramedics instructed her to, right there on the side of the road, filling the place, she recalled, of the Dad who was following behind and unable to be inside the ambulance because of COVID-19.
"I did what he would have been able to do and we just helped her," Kent said, pausing for the right words as the scene replayed in her minds eye. "The actual act of birthing a baby is a really individual activity that's for the Mom. We are just there if there are any complications and if she needs help in any way."
Kent said she wasn't in charge but acknowledged being one of the three people in the back of an ambulance, all of them needed to rise in the moment to give a level of care that this woman and her baby needed.
"That's a cool thing to be, it really is, in that situation," she said with a laugh.
Kent said that July day she learned something about herself she wasn't keenly aware of before: she likes to be in the action of what's happening. She said she also learned that she could do the job, her training kicked in and she helped, how instructed by the other paramedics, to deliver a life into this world.
"I think the moment I remember most clearly is standing in the OR and just watching everything happening around me and going from a position where, essentially, three people in the back of an ambulance doing everything -- to handing off your patient to all these incredible professionals, it kind of made me sad but it also made me super happy because I knew they were safe," Kent said, admitting she almost cried happy tears.
Kent admitted, too, all of the emotions she felt standing there, swallowed in the moment of what happened and called it an overwhelming sense of relief and happiness, as well as joy coupled with a twinge of sadness because she knew deep down, she'd never see that beautiful baby boy again.
"I am just so glad he's healthy and that's all I can really ask for," she said. "I actually think I was the first person the baby saw as he was turned facing me and, well, that's cool to me."
In the end, with the emotional rollercoaster behind her and the excitement of that moment where Kent helped to deliver a baby boy into the world, she said she's thought some about its impact on her moving forward, 11 days later.
"Just being able to say that I was able to help these people and we did it successfully because it could have gone, a million things could have gone wrong but they didn't and I am thankful for that," she said.
Kent said they wanted to meet the Mom and baby but the family declined to do so and she's okay with that. Her job was done and everyone got to go home happy.
"I would like to tell her one more time, just like I did before I left the hospital, that I am just proud of her and she did an amazing job and I am just thankful to be a part of her story," she said.